In Heat
by CombineGLaDOS
Summary: Joker forgets to vent the drive core heat emissions, causing the temperature to rise in the ship, creating a rather uncomfortable situation for Commander Hayley Shepard and Liara. M for suggestive themes


**A/N: I love writing awkward Liara and oblivious Shepard, and I was so very hot the other day that this just…popped into my head. Also this is the closest you are getting to any smut from me (I didn't know whether this would be T or M but I've sure as hell rammed it into the latter oopsie).**

 **Enjoy!**

Liara spread herself out as much as she could in her chair, trying to cool herself off due to the fact the current temperature of the ship was much higher than the normal, icy chill.

With the Normandy being a stealth warship, the heat generated by the drive core had to be vented frequently to ensure it didn't start leaking into the ship. In the event Joker, the Normandy's helmsman, forgets to vent the heat, there is a 10 minute gap between when it begins to vent into the ship and when it begins to fuse the bulkheads together and cook the crew alive.

Today was one of the few occasions where venting the several thousand degrees of heat from the Normandy into space so it didn't turn the Normandy into a heap of melted metal had slipped Joker's mind for about 3 minutes, hence why Liara was feeling immensely uncomfortable.

The asari brought her right hand up to her forehead in an attempt to wipe some of the rapidly beading sweat off. The only time that she had felt this hot was when she was back on Therum, floating in a Prothean bubble and waiting for someone to rescue her before the geth figured out a way into Prothean ruins.

 _How long will it take for the air conditioning to work?_ She asked herself, cursing the fact that most ships were statically cold, and had severely underused and therefore hard to start air conditioning systems, and that for all its upgrades, the Normandy was the same.

After another ten minutes of being irritably hot, and testing the function of a datapad as a fan only to discover that all it did was waft more heat into her face, Liara gave up on trying to remain calm and put up with the temperature in her quarters and turned to go find Shepard and complain to her.

The way she stormed out of her quarters clearly surprised Dr Chakwas, who asked her what could possibly have gotten her in such a foul mood.

"The heat is nearly unbearable and I need to talk to Hayley," Liara snapped, quickly realising how she'd spoken to the extremely kind-hearted British doctor, and rushing out a quick apology before she left the medbay and entered the thankfully deserted mess hall. The only crew member who stayed around here was Kaidan and after Virmire, he was no longer with them. _Goddess, I wish there was something we could have done._

Shaking off the thought, Liara cleared the empty deck in a few, long strides and promptly arrived at the door to Hayley's cabin. Had she been in her normally, shy demeanour, she would have knocked first, but she was frustrated and hot as hell and didn't think twice about entering without permission, hitting the pressure pad to open the door so that she could step inside.

"Hayley, do you have any idea when…when…oh Goddess," suddenly, Liara couldn't remember why she was so angry, nor could she feel any moisture in her mouth as her eyes went wide and a deep purple blush spread across her face.

Hayley was originally sitting at her desk when Liara entered, and promptly got to her feet when she acknowledged the presence, and was therefore standing, front facing Liara, in only her underwear.

Her sports bra and boxer shorts left little to the imagination, her muscular physique far more evident with the lack of material barrier, a faint six pack being visible on her stomach. Liara could not help but notice the many raised and pink scars that marred Shepard's otherwise perfect body, a particularly angry looking one running from her bellybutton to her right hip bone, ( _From when she shot that fuel canister near the facility without standing away from it_ , Liara remembered).

There were also many small freckles, not too dissimilar to those that were on Hayley's face, covering her body at the most random of points. Although one particular discolouration caught Liara's eye more than the freckles and the scars.

Covering a great portion of Hayley's lower left ribs was a red 10 with a small, black S in the 1 and a similarly styled R in the other. The number was on top of a black circle that faded away at the edges. It looked beautiful, but at the same time Liara wondered why Shepard would have gotten a tattoo.

There were also a couple of other things that Liara felt her eyes being tugged towards, but the asari decided that was far too inappropriate and busied herself counting Hayley's scars and hoping to Athame that the Commander broke the silence, Liara not trusting her own ability to talk.

"Liara…?" Hayley raised one of her eyebrows, and the asari breathed an internal sigh of relief that the Commander had done as she had hoped, finally forcing herself to look at her face for a whole second before she felt her blush intensify and she took a vast amount of interest in the floor.

Shepard walked over the other woman, which in turn caused Liara to look up again. This time, no matter how hard she tried she could do nothing but look directly at the human's breasts, unable to look away once her eyes were settled there.

"Are you okay?" There was a slight hint of concern in the human's voice, but it was otherwise neutral. _Does she not realise how she is dressed?_

"I'm fine, Hayley," Liara lied, her eyes now taking note of a mostly faded scar that could be seen on Shepard's left breast and running downwards until it was no longer visible thanks to the Alliance issue bra.

"Are you sure? You seem distracted," Hayley crossed her arms just below her chest, and the concern in her voice increased.

"Well you are…you are not…um,"

"Not what?" The Commander still seemed unaware as to the fact that she was distraction that was making Liara unable to talk, this time reaching out to touch the asari's arm.

"You are not…" Liara finally dragged her eyes away and over to the opposite side of the captian's quarters, clearing her throat while the heat in her cheeks made it feel as though her face was about to melt off, "…clothed."

When Liara looked back at Hayley's face, she noticed that she looked as confused as she had previously sounded.

"Not…clothed…?" and then Liara saw it: the eye widening, cheek reddening, realisation, " _I'm not dressed!_ "

Shepard quickly darted over to her bed and grabbed the top sheet, wrapping it around her body causing a strange feeling to arise in Liara: Disappointment. She caught the Commander off-guard and as good as naked, so why was she disappointed when the woman in question went to cover herself?

"I'm so sorry, Liara, it's just that being in the Alliance for the last 11 years has meant that a lot of people have seen me in my underwear and-"

"What?" _What does she mean 'a lot of people have seen me like that'?_ Jealousy now arose in Liara, as unexpected as its predecessor. Sure, she and Hayley had both confirmed that they had feelings for each other, but that didn't mean she could feel jealous about the people the latter had been with in the past.

"Oh no, I meant it as in communal showers and sleeping quarters! I've not been with a lot of people in the way that you are thinking of," currently, Liara was regretting leaving her own quarters, because this encounter was far too uncomfortable for her, "so…yeah."

An awkward silence followed. Neither women knew what to say the make the other one feel less uncomfortable…Okay, Liara assumed Shepard didn't know what to say to make her feel less uneasy. She had seen her fair share of naked asari, for reasons similar to why many people had already seen Shepard in her underwear, and Liara was at least somewhat relieved that, from what she could see and make out, human females were shaped very similarly to asari. If ( _and when,_ Liara thought with a slight shiver of arousal) she and Shepard had sex, Liara should be able to do what she liked to do when she was alone on Shepard, and therefore would not be at a total loss of what to do.

"I'm guessing that you didn't come in here just to stare at my chest?" Had Liara not been wanting to melt through the floor, she would have slapped Hayley for the remark, but instead she just swallowed hard and was surprised that she didn't choke on her tongue.

"Um…I was going to ask when the air conditioning should be coming on…" There was a small, almost silly, sense of victory in Liara when she voiced the question. After all, she had barely been able to speak otherwise.

"Oh. Within the next 10 minutes or so,"

"Okay. Thank you," The asari was already half way out the door by the time she finished saying 'you', wanting nothing more than to go back to her quarters and wish to Athame that she could erase herself from the face of the galaxy. She already knew that Hayley would be making no attempt to follow her, scantily dressed as she was, and hoped she could quickly manoeuvre back to her safe place.

Unfortunately, a quick dash to her quarters was interrupted when Liara discovered that the previously deserted mess hall now had Tali in it, drinking dextro nutrition fluid through a straw (or 'emergency induction port', as the young quarian called it).

 _Of all the people on the ship,_ Liara quickly glanced at Tali and smiled, hoping that would stop the talkative woman asking her why she looked so flustered. It wasn't that Liara didn't trust the quarian, in fact she, like most other people, saw her as the little sister she never had. It was just that Tali had a habit of accidently mentioning something a little too loud and therefore creating ship-wide gossip.

"Liara, are you-"

"Just fine, Tali. Enjoy your meal!" _Dammitdammitdammitdammit._

Not giving the younger woman a solitary second to respond, Liara made straight for the medbay and breathed an audible sigh of relief when she realised that Chakwas was nowhere to be seen, meaning the final few meters before her destination would be totally uninterrupted.

Finally reaching her sanctuary, Liara virtually threw herself onto her chair and leaned over her desk, covering her face in her hands.

"I saw Hayley in her underwear," she said to no one in particular, at first feeling mortified as the realised began to sink in, but then the strangest thing happened.

She no longer felt embarrassed by what she saw, but incredibly happy and a little turned on when she finally, fully accepted what she had seen.

A week ago, she was still unsure as to whether her feelings towards Hayley were genuine, or lingering hero worship, but now she knew they were real and when the time was right, she was sure as hell going to act on them.


End file.
